For their second album, Japan's
Defiled blend Scandinavian-style death metal and grindcore tropes into
Boredoms-style blasts of overpowering noise. The songs are compressed into 14 short blasts of aggression, only three of which bypass the three-minute mark. So unlike most European death metal acts, which take a piledriver riff and pound it into the ground for five to seven minutes at a time at molasses-slow tempi,
Defiled up both the velocity and the aggression, making songs like the whiplash-speed "Stench of Grudge" -- it must be said that the titles and lyrics don't make a whole lot of sense -- downright exhausting to listen to. At 14 songs in 36 minutes,
Divination is a more satisfying listen than many death metal albums twice its length with half as many songs. ~ Stewart Mason